The Soft Skills You Need To Work in DevOps

I have written about DevOps recently on this blog. You can look at my DevOps introduction here, but to summarise the concept, DevOps refers to Development Operations. It is a combined set of software development practices that bring together the development of software with IT operations. The aim is to improve the systems development environment so the software lifecycle can be shorter – it’s bringing software development closer to the business that it serves.

So far it sounds like DevOps is just focused on software development and the environment used to build software systems – it’s all about coding and process. So what are the skills needed to work in DevOps? Logically you might assume that ‘hard’ subjects such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) might dominate, but I read an article recently that turns this expectation upside down.

Tech Beacon magazine listed four key ‘soft’ skills that everyone working in DevOps requires and none of them are focused on STEM skills. They are:

1. Collaboration and Communication
2. Empathy
3. Customer Experience
4. Problem Solving

[Click here to continue reading this article on the IBA Group blog]

Photo by Christiaan Colen licensed under Creative Commons